Mead Valley Residents’ Anger Targets Sex Offender

Mead Valley residents, incensed over the last-minute placement of a paroled sex offender in their Riverside County neighborhood, on Thursday picketed the halfway house where he lives, concerned about their families’ safety.

In response to public outcry over the parolee’s placement, the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, on a 5-0 vote, gave preliminary approval Tuesday to an emergency ordinance that would tighten restrictions on paroled registered sex offenders in the county. The ordinance would prohibit offenders from living within five miles of any schools, parks, libraries or places where minors congregate, and require them to wear satellite tracking devices at all times.

The ordinance could be adopted next Tuesday, after a week to allow for public notification. If adopted after the supervisors vote again, it would take effect a month later.

“We just learned about this sexual predator just a couple days before he was released,” Supervisor Jeff Stone told about 70 people at a tense community meeting in Sun City on Wednesday night. “It kind of caught us all by surprise. Frankly, it left a number of the Board of Supervisors feeling helpless.”

David Allyn Dokich, 52, was supposed to relocate to Sun City, a largely retirement-age community near Perris at the western end of Riverside County, where his deceased parents once lived. Sun City barred Dokich from moving there, and he was placed May 5 at a halfway house in the unincorporated community of Mead Valley, where he is confined to the property 24 hours a day. Residents, area businesses and schools were notified that day of Dokich’s arrival.

Dokich, who must also wear an electronic monitoring anklet indefinitely, was convicted of a 1982 rape of a 15-year-old girl in his Dana Point apartment and of kidnapping and raping a 16-year-old Riverside County girl in 1985 while on parole.

Stone, the proposed ordinance’s author, is organizing a ballot initiative drive to strengthen state laws governing the more than 85,000 registered sex offenders in California, 2,299 of whom live in Riverside County. There are 11,641 registered sex offenders in Los Angeles County, 1,868 in Orange County and 2,738 in San Bernardino County, according to the Megan’s Law website of the state attorney general’s office.

The ordinance would also stipulate that the state notify Riverside County officials 60 days before a registered felony sex offender is released there.

California’s penal code currently requires the state to give counties 45 days’ notice of arriving sex-offender parolees and restricts those convicted of sex acts with children younger than 14 from living within a quarter-mile of a school.

Whether the ordinance could be enforced is unclear.

A county cannot override state legislation, said Riverside County Counsel William Katzenstein.

If “the state has control ... in a certain subject, we can’t legislate on that area,” he said.

State penal code stipulates that paroled sex offenders return to their county of residence. Sex offenders must register annually with local law enforcement, said Margot Bach, spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections.

“It’s absolutely the county’s right” to pass a more stringent ordinance, Bach said.

At this point, however, it is unknown what effect the ordinance would have on state law. The attorney general’s office had no comment on the legislation.

“It’s very restrictive,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Linda Dunn, who specializes in sexually violent predators, said of the ordinance. “Unfortunately, we’re stuck with this guy,” Dunn said at Wednesday’s meeting.

People are “not protesting because they’re mad, they’re protesting because they’re scared,” Supervisor Marion Ashley, chairman of the five-member board, said at a Tuesday meeting. “There must be a more suitable place” for Dokich to live, he said.

“I have three kids. I can’t let them go out in the yard like they used to play,” said Cindy Ramirez, 42, whose property is adjacent to Dokich’s new residence. She has been protesting his presence the past week.

“We don’t want [sexual offenders] by anybody’s kids,” she said.

“We share the same concerns as everybody else,” said Alfred Martinez, chief deputy administrator of the Department of Corrections Diamond Bar regional office, which oversees Dokich.

Officials are doing “everything in our power to protect the public and at the same time provide this guy with supervision,” said Martinez, who has fielded 50 to 60 calls from community members in the last several days. “If you drive him underground ... then he becomes more of a threat.”

At any given time there are about 9,800 paroled sex offenders statewide, said Department of Corrections spokesman George Kostyrko. Roughly 500 of them live in Riverside County, according to Supervisor John F. Tavaglione.

Riverside County Sheriff Bob Doyle applauded the measure.

“I think we do need to put pressure on the state, get some laws changed to make it a little more restrictive,” he told the board Tuesday.

“I think there is some insensitivity in just putting these people back in the local area,” he said.